At the Blythe Ferry landing, the National Park Service says, Cherokee citizens took their last step off their homelands. The park sits in Meigs County at the confluence of the Hiwassee and Tennessee rivers. In 1838 thousands of Cherokee and hundreds of Muscogee (Creek) people camped here in harsh conditions, waiting for the ferry to carry them over the Tennessee River on the forced march west.
The ferry site was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1982. A county memorial, Cherokee Removal Memorial Park, was dedicated here in 2005. On June 2, 2026, Tennessee State Parks dedicated the ground as Cherokee Trail of Tears State Park, with tribal partners from the Cherokee Nation and the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians at the ceremony. It is a designated site on the Trail of Tears National Historic Trail, and the state says it will interpret the removal and conserve the cultural landscape.
The land is also part of the Hiwassee Wildlife Refuge, managed by the Tennessee Wildlife Resources Agency, where up to 20,000 sandhill cranes return each winter. The Hiwassee River Heritage Center in Charleston, to the east, is another certified interpretive site on the same trail and covers the area's Cherokee and Civil War history.
The closest stops worth working into your route
Roadside plaques and monuments within a short detour